Has your view of LTT or Linus changed?

[dizmo]

So with all the drama lately, I just have one question: Has all of this changed your view on LTT at all?

I'll even break it down further to Linus vs LTT as a whole, since they're really two separate things.

 

Personally, I was initially extremely annoyed with what happened. Both with Linus's reaction, and the fact it happened at all (LTT failing). Now I'm not as annoyed as much, however when you really look into all the things that go wrong, or they try to get a pass on...they really do need a lot of work. Something not brought up that I always thought was pretty weak was their support taking forever on the LTT Store. They said they had high volumes for months...sorry fam, after a few months if it's ongoing, it's just you not having enough people in place.

 

It's all part of the growing pains of a business I'm sure, but there's a lot to fix. Good will and good intentions only go so far. I'm excited to see where LTT goes in the next few years, but honestly I doubt I'll see them as a GN, HardwareUnboxed, or similar channel; they'll always be the gamer bro, sexual innuendo, over the top almost pointless project entertainment channel they've grown into. Luckily tech moves fast and there's a whole new generation of people for them to try and pivot to.

 

Mods, yes I read the little notice before posting this, however I can't put a poll in the middle of an existing thread (to my knowledge).

[Erioch]

I commend the author for the correct use of "couldn't care less".  It's a pet peeve of mine.

[Shin-Gouki]

I personally taking a wait and see position. Time will give me a position.

[podkall]

14 minutes ago, Erioch said:

I commend the author for the correct use of "couldn't care less".  It's a pet peeve of mine.

as a foreigner I just put it in the sentence, but I can understand how natives can find it annoying.

 

 

Couldn't care less can translate to:

 

"I couldn't care less for mistakes and inaccuracies of Linus or LMG my view on them remains the same"

[Moonzy]

To me it's personal

Lost all respect I had for the man after that

[Fnige]

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

To me it's personal

Lost all respect I had for the man after that

Oh yeah linus is legitimately that kind of person.

 

I guess after all, never meet the people who you look up to. They turn out to be a bit of an ass usually

[Marhier]

I heavily reduced my viewership of the spin-off LMG channels in response to the resolution of clickbait titles.

My level of concern would have been mitigated had the clickbait been accompanied by comprehensive context, which I distinctly recall was initially pledged by Linus during the initial discourse on the matter.

 

From the commencement of the Short Circuit series, I promptly developed a sense of disenchantment towards the individuals operating behind the camera, who exhibited an escalating frequency of attempts at humor. This source of irritation was particularly pronounced in instances where Adam assumed a role behind the camera, as it appeared that his interjections followed each of the presenter's paragraphs.

 

There exists a multitude of organisational aspects within LMG that necessitate rectification, a significant portion of which pertains to personnel displaying incompetence or creating a sense of vexation.

[okkee]

Quote

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

So with all the drama lately, I just have one question: Has all of this changed your view on LTT at all?

 

Hasn't really changed my view on both. Both still just ok. LTT definitely needs to up its HR/PR tho.

[Arika]

i will say it's been quite fun to be someone who just doesn't care. i neither support nor hate LMG based on the current information, they are just kind of "there".

 

So the insanity on both sides of the scale has been somewhat enjoyable to see the people defending LMG with every fibre of their being like Linus is a personal friend and the people are the actively picking apart everything to find the most incorrect interpretation of the situation to fuel their anger for all things LMG

[Murasaki]

Don't really care, doesnt affect me in any way so im just neutral. Gonna see this dude on a video from time to time and might just enjoy his antics not thinking about what he is and what his views are.

[McGherkin]

I have to say that the way Linus handled, and continues to handle, this has been terrible. The constant jabs at GN have been quite pathetic, frankly. All they did is call you out with facts, that’s their job and that’s what they said they’d do. I doubt the original video was even particularly personal. It’s a shame because Linus’s takes on random topics on WAN are generally pretty fun to listen to, but he definitely has gone down in my estimations.

 

I’d like to say that LMG as a whole though I want to give the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully Terren has laid down the law and it does seem like the others at the head of the table understand what upset the community and how to fix it. Time will tell, but the responses to the issues brought up by GN’s video seem to be the right ones.

 

What still hasn’t been addressed is the Madison allegations. I don’t know how that’s going to play out but I think that’s going to be my biggest influence on whether I still support LMG.

[Basti0815]

For me, LTT is entertainment, and last week was everything but entertainment. All the whining about alleged working conditions or the fact that a cooler that is completely overpriced was criticized just like that ruins the fun. But that's not because of LTT or Linus, but because of all the haters.

You can always criticize everything, let he who is perfect cast the first stone.

[Alex T88]

23 minutes ago, Basti0815 said:

For me, LTT is entertainment, and last week was everything but entertainment. All the whining about alleged working conditions or the fact that a cooler that is completely overpriced was criticized just like that ruins the fun. But that's not because of LTT or Linus, but because of all the haters.

You can always criticize everything, let he who is perfect cast the first stone.

Indeed ! Shame on Steve from GN, the number 1 among haters and everyone else who ruined the entertainment and all the fun you had. Not like LTT or Linus had anything to do with it. The haters, always gonna hate !  

[Phil57]

Despite the range of options, I think I fall into "None of the above".

 

How so? Glad you asked.

 

I have always had two opinions - one of Linus, one of LMG/LTT.  That is where my problem with fitting into those options lies.

 

Of Linus, I don't know the guy. I enjoy the WAN show enough to watch it quite a bit, and get enough of a view into certain areas of tech for it to be worth watching it, most of the time. Yeah, I often enjoy the entertainment aspects but, as Linus himself has often pointed out, "on-camera Linus" is not "off-camera Linus". It's a fake personality, and he's acting. I don't know off-camera Linus at all, but could take a guess at a character attribute or two just from knowing what it takes to drive a company from nohing, to LMG today. But then, that's also at least partly a view of what I'll call "Livonne", as it's taken both, and they seem, business-wise at least, to be highly complementary. Linus is just far more public-facing and gets wat comes from that, both good and bad. As for Linus personaly, well, he seems a bit OCD in places but, I still watch the WAN show and get a degree of insight from it .... and probably as much from Luke as Linus.

 

So really, I think neither positively nor negatiely of Linus. So he has feet of clay, makes mistakes and sometimes, can be an insensitve ass. So can I. So can we all. Show me someone claiming they aren't, and I'll show you either a Saint, or a self-deluded fool. And without knowing, in far more detail than I do or ever will, what his daily schedule and pressure levels are, I refuse to read too much into being an "insensittive ass". It's all very well criticising his sensitivity from the far side of a computer screen but unless you were there, and know just how busy andor pressured he was and how much he was trying to juggle at the exact time any "insensitive" remark was made, it's ignorant to judge his personality over it. 

 

The videos, and WAN show comments about why he stood down as CEO were, I thought, illuminating. Paraphrasing, he said something like "I'm trying to make million-dollar investment decisions, meet a grueling filming schedule, run 120 staff and yet, here I am having to mediate over which snacks are or aren't available in the office kitchen".

 

There's an old shaggy dog story, for which the punchline is "when you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember the initial objective was to drain the swamp". When you're buried in work, have 30-hours of stuff to do and 24-hours of time to do it in, well, he's the very model of sensitivity compared to me if I were to get pestered about kitchen snacks. Believe me, do that to e and I (verbally) bite. Like a family of alligators.

 

Does any of that excuse him being "insensitive" on occasion? No. He owes a duty of care to all staff, and has a respnsibility to customers/viewers too. But it does go a long way to help understand how things can happen, and how "insensitivty" might, and I sress "might" just refect work load and pressure. That "reshoot costs $500" decision? The wrong decision, obviously, but was it just an incorrect snap judgment while trying to juggle 50 other important isses? I have no idea, because I wasn't there but NOBODY gets every singledecision right 100% of the time, even if they're not up to their ass in alligators at the time.

 

I don't judge Linus because I don't know him at all, let alone well enough to do so. I get what I expect from screen-Linus, which is a bit of entertainment and a bit of industry insight. If I stop getting it, I'll stop watching.

 

Which brings me to LMG/LTT.

 

I'm not a customer for merch, because I'm not fan enough to buy stuff, backpacks or screwdrivers included but especially not clothes, just because it's LMG merch, when there are every bit good enough alternatives available locally (Europe) and, because of freight, far cheaper. I consume LMG output, to a degree, but not really for technical reviews. Not yet, anyway.

 

So as far as I'm concerned, while I certainly don't endorse or condone the issues that got LMG got into this mess, I'm hoping that what comes out the far side, certainly in terms of Labs output, will be far better because of it. I'm hoping the review "changes" are real, and not just for PR damage control. There were, obviously, issues with the pace of production and accuracy/consistency and, no doubt, in large part resulting from the speed of growth of the company, from moving from single-team to multiple-team ethodology (see Ian Cutress for an insight into that) and if the result of all this furore, and from the presence of the new CEO, is to address the short-comings which the CEO's appointment clearly prove were already known as an problem before GN blew things up, then hopefully the resulting effect will be positive for LMG in the future. Only time will tell.

 

Of those options, probably "couldn't care less" comes closest, but only in the sense that I'm just one more pair of eyes on the far side of a screen, so I care about as much for Linus as he cares what I think of him. If I think either posittively or negatively of Linus, it is to infer a relationship that simply doesn't exist. Never met the bloke, never spoken to him, never even 'spoken' via email. No doubt, never will. But I "care less" in the sense of not being invested, either way, so it's hard to see how feeling either better or worse about him or LMG going forward works. But 2care less" can be seen as having negative connotations, which is why I avoided that.

 

in short, my position is a bit too nuasnced to sum up in any dozen or so selection box criteria. Hence this essay.

 

I hope the product I consume (video and future Labs output) are better in future as a result of this upheaval, but it's far too soon to tell. Ask me again in a year or two.

 

 

 

 

[robrobbierobertson]

I think much less of Linus now. Mostly because he acted like such a little wuss during this. He should have come out like a leader and a man.
Instead of getting out in front of this, he let it sizzle for a week, with no feedback to anyone. And the video he did release had an error in it (the double review).
That's just stupid.

[Phil57]

13 minutes ago, Alex T88 said:

Indeed ! Shame on Steve from GN, the number 1 among haters and everyone else who ruined the entertainment and all the fun you had. Not like LTT or Linus had anything to do with it. The haters, always gonna hate !  

i wouldn't go that far with GN Steve. Yeah, the whole thing came across to me as a bit holier-than-thou. ian Cutress' 90-minute autopsy of the situation was, in my view, accurately analytical of that.

 

But .... Steve lit the touchpaper for sure, but he didn't create the firework in the first place. Frankly, it needed saying, and there's a limited number of the people with the platform to say it and have it noticed. 

 

As for fans and haters, this is the internet. It's been like that since shortly after it started gaining ground in public. In fact, thinking about it, it was like that on various online platforms years before anyone ever heard terms like "social media", let alone "streaming video".  I suspect if you put more than half a dozen (and maybe less) people in a room, give them a coffee (no alcohol) and a slightly contentious subject to discuss and you'll see the same trend to fans and haters. There'l probably also be at least one troll.

[Jaja92]

I feel much more supportive of linus and LMG, especially after it became clear how dumb the Madison story was after I looked into it. She lied, you can literally go back and see how much she uploaded on LTT socials. LTT posted about 1 or 2 TiK Toks a WEEK. The one thing about her claim that we can actually verify she straight up lied about, what’s actually even crazier is if she didn’t lie and she was supposed to be doing two Tik toks and insta posts a day she somehow she wasn’t fired after failing to meet her quota for months on end. 

 

In what world is posting two tik toks a week some insane workload? The absurdity of it hilarious you have to be completely detached from reality to seriously suggest something like that. 

[Alex T88]

29 minutes ago, Phil57 said:

i wouldn't go that far with GN Steve

I was being sarcastic towards the OP, given the nonsense he posted. Anyways, what's done is done, what matters is how LTT moves forward and addresses the problems. As always, facts will speak for themselves, one way or the other. Only time will tell. 

[Phil57]

32 minutes ago, Alex T88 said:

I was being sarcastic towards the OP, given the nonsense he posted. Anyways, what's done is done, what matters is how LTT moves forward and addresses the problems. As always, facts will speak for themselves, one way or the other. Only time will tell. 

I didn't notice on the sarcasm, but then, as a member here for about 5 minutes, it's so easy to miss in written text.

 

On the rest, agreed.

[TetraSky]

Genuinely couldn't care less. I watch LTT to be entertained while getting somewhat informed on new stuff. They are not my only source of information and I wouldn't make/avoid a purchase solely based on their video.

My opinion of LTT and Linus neither went up or down, it stayed the same.

 

My opinion of the community, on the other hand, went down quite a bit. People were WAY too quick to fetch their pitchforks.

Especially all the newcomers who suddenly decided they wanted to be part of the forum community a few weeks ago (before leaving never to be seen again once they gave their opinions nobody asked for), only to disregard the CS, spam and bash Linus along with LMG. 

[dustbuns]

tl;dr - "everyone makes mistakes and I don't think people should be defined by their errors. I believe people deserve the chance to improve and learn from situations like this.".

I don't know anyone at LTT personally, everyone makes mistakes and I don't think people should be defined by their errors. I believe people deserve the chance to improve and learn from situations like this (unless they keep making the same mistakes over and over). A lot of the Madison stuff was troubling to read but again I don't know anyone at LTT personally, I wasn't there and I never make judgements without knowing the full story and this will likely be one of those situations where I never will, unless they address it completely but I don't see that happening but if they did then I'd more likely commend them for it, full transparency and all that.

[Toakan]

Honestly, couldn't care less. The only stake I have in LTT is from purchasing some of their Merchandise.

 

LTT is a company, they sell products. Some of them are good and some bad, as a whole there is a seeming lack of self-awareness when it comes to how they communicate to the community. The failure to read the room on many different issues that have come up over the years.

 

That being said, their Video content is entertainment. Sometimes it's interesting from a technical perspective, getting Jake or Emily involved in bodged enterprise setups is amusing, sometimes it's just daft like the mega fan cooling stuff they've done with the engineers team. It's like watching a TV show, you may like some of the actors or the story being told during the episode, if you don't, you can always turn it off. 

When Creator warehouse was first announced, I had hopes that they would reach out to other Youtubers and help them self-supply their merchandise (Similar to the JRE knife) but on a larger scale. This crossover with Noctua and their screwdriver, I find personally to be meh, the same with their Noctua Fan flairs they di a few years ago. The backpack warranty shenanigans were daft, there's no other way to say it.

 

Labs was a bit of the same, during the announcement they touted it to be a way to provide accurate, community available data for various setups / configs, different product validations etc. So far all we've seen is more data on Charts in videos, the same thing that most media outlets call AMD or Intel out for, which is hiding their data in graphs, Labs are doing the same. Sure we see what Hardware they're using in most videos, but bios versions, software versions, configuration sets etc are missing and those are what really make a difference. People should be able to copy the Labs setup, like for like, and validate the results within margin of error. Currently you cannot do that.

 

Linus, as he's said in various videos' now, is an actor. What we see is not what he's like in real life, that's fine, personally I would not want his personality involved in the community as a PR spokesman on behalf of the company. That is purely because he is emotional, and tries to do what he thinks is the right thing, but it usually ends up turning on him. You can see this in any of the direct community engagement pieces Linus has done, from the apology video, to the retirement planning and the written posts on the forums. As a standalone employee, who's views may not reflect the company .. yada yada.. it's fine. This is likely to start being the case moving forward from this latest issue.

 

[Rex Hite]

Regardless of whether I have enjoyed, been educated by, or disheartened at the videos, I was never invested in the content or the personalities doing the presenting. To me there's no difference between a slipshod video of a cooler and a Lab produced analysis of a device accurate to the nth degree. It's just not important stuff.

 

Employment practices are another matter and the discussion of specifics does not belong on any public forum.

 

[aminit]

7 hours ago, Moonzy said:

To me it's personal

Lost all respect I had for the man after that

That's one of Linus biggest weakness, he sometime engage and give respect to negative nonsense almost troll like feedback instead of just ignoring them and get defensive/take offense in valid criticism and opinion from the community instead of engaging in a respectful way or just respecting their opinion.

 

He need a "what would Luke do in this situation?" mindset or some kind of coaching on how to deal with ppl (whether the community, content creators, sponsors) in a professional/friendly way.

 

As for the poll I feel more positively about Linus and/or LTT, because even though this drama was way overblown I do think that some (warranted or unwarranted) positive change come out of it.

[Zackeires]

Hey, props to the OP for a good post on the topic, most of the others were Mid(No substance), not acknowledging that maybe there were some truths on those statements or just trolling...

I am of the camp that this negatively affected my vision of Linus but not LMG, because he did not do what he preached. His first act of all of this was come to the forums and do a non-apology of his mistakes, triple down that he did nothing wrong and took everything personally, he robbed the company of a first good response (again, just like he did with trust me bro) and only made the statments that there were faults inside of LMG comunications True...

But because he robbed LMG the right of a good first response to the GN video we got something good out of all of that. That they were hearing to the "community" at large, They are now aware of how much they need to slow down sometimes (in the lines of the famous quote "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.") And how many processies needed to change. Which I'm neutral until they show real progress, but is a really good first step to showing that they got what it takes to be more accurate on reviews and do better.

Still that first Linus response rubbed me the wrong way, it seemed like a brat ranting after being called out for not finishing his homework on time. It seemed petty and using semantics to not take accountabillity of what was wrong.

Sorry for my bad english, but I hope I made a clear enough response :v